When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.

The world was full of beauty. She wanted to grab hold of it and take it down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane. Usually, though, by miles. She couldn’t expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that. But sometimes you could. Sometimes you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that should stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn’t too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it. To cross that membrane, and feel alive.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

Sometimes you want to hear your own mother's voice.

. . .There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.